As you spend more and more time using Cloud-delivered services, applications, and data, odds are you’ll end up interested in a hybrid Cloud environment that can be deployed in ways that quite specifically meet your organization’s needs, both business-wise and budget-wise.

If your experience has been limited to public Clouds, you’ll need to tread carefully into the realm of hybrids because, by definition, hybrid Clouds are customized. Very quickly, you’ll come to understand that the success of your hybrid Cloud greatly depends on its customizer.

A mobile workforce may sound great in principle, but I’ve heard plenty of concern from managers about how well an untethered workforce will really perform.

I haven’t seen anything in the way of a rigorous, real-world, before-and-after study that shows, one way or the other, whether mobility aids or detracts from workers’ productivity and effectiveness. Which means that for now anecdotal evidence will have to do.

Sleek new devices like the mini iPad and Windows Surface promise to add even more momentum to the already headlong rush into business mobility and BYOD that will, according to market researcher IDC, have more U.S. Internet users accessing the Internet through mobile devices by 2015 than through PCs or other wireline devices.

And it’s all made possible by Cloud computing infrastructure, without which business mobility would remain a hassled tangle of siloed applications, data, and communications services.

A recent issue of InformationWeek pooled data from an assortment of that publication’s own surveys to offer some insight into the current state of Cloud use by IT shops. We also get a few hints about both the degree and direction of Cloud momentum and its power as a disruptive technology:

11% of IT departments have a major Cloud implementation in place [Global CIO Survey, February 2012].

20% have a formal company policy to evaluate Cloud options for any new services or systems; 27% prefer to use the Cloud [Cloud ROI Survey, November 2011].Continue reading →

As 2012 begins to wind down, we at Quest are finding that interest in Cloud computing continues to wind up. Our experience is borne out by recent research, which indicates that the business drivers for Cloud computing haven’t shifted much. Here’s a chart from North Bridge Venture Partners’ 2012 report:

A recent report by Forrester Consulting suggests your web applications may be far more vulnerable than you think. According to Forrester, 51% of the 240 North American and European companies surveyed experienced at least one application security incident since the beginning of 2011. And 18% of those suffered losses of at least $500,000. For 8% of those surveyed, losses topped $1 million.

The majority of developers are not security experts, and secure coding is historically not identified as a priority. Oftentimes, the arduous task of vulnerability identification and remediation cannot be successfully addressed by limited IT security resources.

Look for an app development services provider who offers a time-saving solution for all types of security testing — outsourced, individual, and enterprise-wide analysis — and for all types of users, including application developers, build managers, Quality Assurance (QA) teams, penetration testers, security auditors, and senior management.

Late last year, market researcher IDC reported that by 2015 more U.S. Internet users will access the Internet through mobile devices than through PCs or other wireline devices. Judging by the eager embrace of smartphone and tablets since then, I’d guess their prediction may be conservative.

And unquestionably, this kind of mobility in business is a game-changer both in terms of how we do business and how we do information security.